CSI Thetford: The murder of Stephen de Charron, Prior of The

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Douglas Richardson

CSI Thetford: The murder of Stephen de Charron, Prior of The

Legg inn av Douglas Richardson » 06 jul 2007 17:52:36

Dear Newsgroup ~

Back in 1999, there was a brief discussion on the
soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup regarding the Continental origin of
the medieval family of Charron of Northumberland. This family is
ancestral to several 17th Century New World immigrants, among them
being Katherine Hamby, Olive Welby, Jeremy Clarke, Thomas Owsley,
Dannett Abney, Nathaniel Browne, John Davenport, Henry, Jane and
Nicholas Lowe, Charles Calvert, and Mary Johanna Somerset.

According to information in print, the earliest known ancestor of the
Charron family is a certain Guiscard de Charron I (also known as
Guiscard of Savoy), a cleric, who accompanied his kinsman, Peter of
Savoy, to England in 1241. He was presented by the king in 1242 to be
rector of Fransham, Norfolk, and was appointed by Peter of Savoy to be
Seneschal of the Honour of Richmond. Guiscard de Charron I had two
brothers, Bernard of Savoy, a knight who was appointed in 1241 as
Constable of Reigate and Windsor castles, and Stephen de Charron, a
monk, who as Prior of Thetford, Norfolk, was murdered in 1248
[Reference: H.E. Craster, ed. History of Northumberland, vol. 9
(published 1909), pg.249, et seq.].

Since the time of the original thread, I've located additional
material regarding the murder of Guiscard de Charron I's brother,
Stephen de Charron, in an an edition of Matthew Paris. Not
surprisingly, this account indicates that the Charron brothers were
near kinsmen of Queen Eleanor of Provence. Below is a full transcript
of the account of this ghastly murder.

Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Source: Rev. J.A. Giles, Matthew Paris's English History, 2 (1853):
274-276.

sub 1248:

"In the month of December in this year, [Stephen de Charron] the prior
of Thetford, a Savoyard by birth, and a monk of Clugny, who declared
himself to be a relation or kinsman of the queen, and had assumed airs
of pride from that circumstance, invited his brothers, Bernard, a
knight, and Guiscard, a beastly clerk, to come to his house at
Thetford. There he remained, according to custom, the whole night
till cock-crow, indulging in immoderate eating and drinking with them,
and forgetting his matin devotions: seldom did he trouble himself to
be present at mass, even at the little masses; seldom did he appear at
canonical hours; but in the morning, being surfeited with food, he
vomited forth his nightly potations. If the cry of the hungering poor
sounded in his ears, this was a minor care in his breast, whenever
Bernard, one of his said brothers, went away, Guiscard the other,
whose belly was like a bladder in frosty weather, and whose body
would load a waggon, stayed longer with him, and swallowed up all the
food of the monks in the Charybdis of his belly, and afterwards, when
well gorged, despised and loaded them with insults. Whilst the said
prior then was thus entertaining his brothers, who had borne the toil
and heat of the day, in a manner unbecoming to him, and was
disgracefully wasting the substance of his little church,
transgressing, as was stated, the bounds of all moderation in his
gluttony, a dispute and strife arose between him and one of the monks,
a Welshman by birth. This monk, whom he, the prior, had some little
time before summoned from Clugny, he was now endeavouring to send back
thither against his will, not out of charity, but from hatred,
although the said monk opposed the proceeding and excused himself on
reasonable grounds. But when the prior with a loud voice swore
horribly that the said monk should proceed on a pilgrimage with the
scrip and wallet, this demoniac monk, inflamed with violent anger, or
rather with madness, drew a knife and plunged it into the prior's
belly, without the least hesitation at perpetrating such a crime
within the precincts of a church. The wounded prior, with the very
death-rattle in his throat, endeavoured to call the monks to his aid
by his cries, or, at any rate, to arouse them; but he was unable to do
so, owing to the stoppage of the arteries; whereon the monk again
rushed upon him, and with heavy blows, three or four times repeated,
buried the knife up to the handle in his lifeless body; and thus this
wretch, to the enormous injury and disgrace of the monastic order,
sent the wretched prior to hell, beneath the anger of an offended
God. These circumstances I have related fully, that those who read
may be warned and chastened, and prevented from perpetrating such
crimes, lest they be hurled by an angry God into a similar ruin. The
author of this crime was seized by persons who came to the spot, and,
being well secured, was committed to prison. When the circumstance
came to the knowledge of the king, worried by the continual complaints
of the queen, he ordered the murderer to be chained, and, after being
deprived of his eyes, to be thrown into the lowest dungeon in the
castle of Norwich, notwithstanding the principle for which St. Thomas
the Matyr combated in defence of a certain priest who had committed
homicide, shedding even his blood and his brains, that a clerk, and
especially a priest, could not be condemned before a lay tribunal, or
hanged after his orders had been taken from him; a principle for which
he suffered matrydom; that God does not punish twice for the same
offence; that He puts a limit on the punishment of the wicked, and
rewards far beyond a man's deserts; and that a single fault is
sufficiently and reasonably atoned by a single punishment." END OF
QUOTE.

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